Chapter Seventy-Nine of 'A Brother to Basilisks'- The Trial
Chapter Seventy-Eight.
Title: A Brother to Basilisks (79/?)
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairings: Eventual Harry/Draco and Ron/Hermione
Warnings: Angst, violence, some gore, AU from Prisoner of Azkaban onwards
Rating: R
Summary: AU of PoA. Harry wakes in the night to a voice calling him from somewhere in the castle-and when he follows it, everything changes. Updated every Friday.
Author’s Notes: This is a canon-divergent AU that starts after Chapter 7 of Prisoner of Azkaban. It will probably run to at least the mid-point of The Half-Blood Prince. It will also be long.
Chapter One.
Thank you again for all the reviews!
Chapter Seventy-Nine-The Trial
“Am I going to have to go to the trial?”
“You will be a reserve witness,” said Severus quietly, letting one heavy hand rest on Harry’s shoulder for a moment. The boy was over flinching from any touch that was not a light wisp. In fact, sometimes he seemed all the better for having someone’s touch to ground him. “Because Apparition or Flooing can bring you so quickly, you can stay here. You won’t have to come to the Ministry unless someone asks to speak to you.”
“And they probably won’t, because Blaise is the only one that knows about me knowing,” Harry said, his head bowing.
Technically, Severus and Elena Zabini and Minerva knew as well, but Severus saw no need to bring that up right now. “Yes,” he said. “I will be there because Mr. Zabini was a member of my House. But you can stay here.”
Harry hesitated a little. He hadn’t turned completely away, although Dash had crawled up to him as if he would leave. Severus raised his eyebrows, not knowing what to expect. He and Harry had spoken about the trial for ten minutes already. It was coming near to the time when Severus himself would have to Floo.
“I don’t think he would want you to feel guilty. Zabini, I mean.”
Severus knew what Harry meant without him having to explain, although he was stumbling over his tongue now, probably because Dash had prompted him. “I must,” he said. “I was committed to seeing abuse in children at last, and I missed one in my own House.”
“But Zabini isn’t like Parkinson. He wouldn’t have admitted it even if you started asking him. In fact, he might have attacked you.”
“Guilt is not rational,” said Severus, with a faint smile as he saw the small frown that made its way over Harry’s face. “I am well-aware of what Mr. Zabini would probably say, and thank you for attempting to mitigate my feelings. But I have learned how to use guilt as a weapon.”
“Against Damirini, I hope.”
Harry was standing straight, and his eyes looked even brighter than the omnipresent yellow glow behind Dash’s eyelids. Severus had to smile. How had Harry turned out this compassionate, to loathe the abuser of someone who had tried to kill his snake?
“Yes. Of course.” And if it would also act as a goad on himself, Severus saw no need to admit that right now. He reached out and pressed gently, heavily, on Harry’s shoulder once more, then turned to the fireplace. The trial awaited him, and what he would decide to say. Which would depend, incidentally, on the configurations of chance and personalities that awaited him in the trial itself, so perhaps it was useless trying to decide now.
“Then go get him,” said Harry, and nodded as though he was wishing Severus good luck from the middle of a fighting ring, and walked away. Dash waved his tail at Severus before the door closed.
Severus sighed and spent a moment massaging his eyelids. Yes, he would have to go to the Ministry and straight into the middle of a trial he had spent the past week dreading.
But he would have to go, and not only because they would call him as a witness, to speak for Mr. Zabini, who would only come if he was absolutely needed. Severus was also going for himself, and his future duty to students in Slytherin.
I need to be cleverer and more observant. But I also need to be stronger.
*
“The Wizengamot begins the trial of Jordan Damirini, sometime member of this body.”
Lucius resisted the urge to touch his fingers to his lips, since he knew he was under observation. That was an interesting way to put it: true, and yet also distancing the Wizengamot from Damirini if the accusations proved the truer. Lucius might have to start admiring Madam Olivia Amaront, the acting Head of the Wizengamot in Dumbledore’s absence.
Unfortunately, that was the last thing he found to admire about the trial proceedings for some time. Madam Amaront made a long speech about how unsettled things had been for the Wizengamot lately, with Dumbledore’s sudden disappearance and now the sudden trial of a member of “this august body,” and included irrelevant anecdotes about how much better things had been in her day. Then she turned the floor over to other Wizengamot members who said much the same thing.
The only interesting or relevant words in that flow of nostalgia came from Flint, whom Lucius had invited over with Damirini. Called on to speak, he stood up and said, “My childhood was quieter. But it only came from perception. I wasn’t a Wizengamot member then. I didn’t know what went on.”
He sat down, and a shocked little susurrus ran through the room. Lucius bit his lip to keep from laughing. That was as close to a scold as anyone would come.
Madam Amaront finally cleared her throat and murmured, “Yes. Well. We should begin.” This time, Lucius held back the snicker only by biting his tongue. Amaront turned to face the far door. “Bring in the accused.”
He was still the accused, not the prisoner, the way Lucius had heard the accused called at other Wizengamot trials. He watched with his emotion shut away behind cold, clear walls as Damirini came in, wearing only a light pair of ceremonial chains. They’d even let him keep his wand, and only one Auror walked with him, behind him instead of at his side.
Lucius started to sneer after all, and stopped.
There was something different about Damirini from the last time Lucius had seen him. He didn’t look terrified, but neither did he project the façade of effortless confidence Lucius had expected from him. His eyes were glazed and he swayed back and forth a little between steps. Now and then he took a deep breath and tried to stand upright further than the chains would allow him.
Puzzled, Lucius watched as Damirini plopped heavily into the chair in the center of the floor and his Auror escort circled to secure the chains to the arms of the chair. Had he been foolish enough to take a potion that would give him courage? But none of them Lucius knew had effects like that, and the Wizengamot had the right to order a blood test which would reveal such potions.
Like the one that some people use to try and resist Veritaserum, Lucius thought. That one didn’t work, and Damirini, from trying cases that had seen it used, ought to know it. But again, perhaps his desperation had overcome him.
“Do you understand the charges laid against you?” Madam Amaront began.
The litany of questions and responses would continue a while. Lucius chose to watch Damirini instead. There was certainly nothing slow or awkward about his responses. He could sit up and answer with, if not his usual grace, at least commendable speed. And he frowned now and then, and shook his head, as if he was shaking off the effects of whatever potion he’d consumed.
It was still interesting. And then Lucius saw the way Severus leaned forwards in his seat, watching Damirini with focused intensity, and had to smile.
Did you do something, my friend? I can only hope that any blood test they order the man to undergo does not reveal your handiwork.
*
Elena Zabini is an artist.
Severus had thought, when he first saw the way Damirini walked as he came into the room, that she had laid him under a Befuddlement Draught. But that would be easy to detect, and the Wizengamot had a policy of stopping a trial and beginning it over again if they found a potion like that.
No, instead Elena had done something far more difficult and delicate. She had used a ritual to create the potion, and used her own rage and some sacrifice of beloved objects to open the way for the ritual’s magic. The requirements of it were far too stringent for someone to meet if they merely acted out of normal emotion.
It was strength so deeply and wonderfully wielded that Severus had to smile, and bow his head in admiration. It only bothered him that, while she was here, he didn’t know exactly where she was sitting, so he didn’t know if she would see the gesture or not.
Then he saw a faint flash of red light from a corner of the gallery. It caught his eye because the finished potion would have been red. Severus turned to face her, and saw her calm expression relax a moment in acknowledgment before she, too, focused on Damirini.
Severus regarded him with interest again. While he knew the ritual and what the potion would have done if he had undertaken to create it-which he might have, if Harry would have permitted vengeance on the Dursleys-he had no idea what Elena Zabini would consider full enough revenge. The process he knew; but each result was unique.
When the Wizengamot members finally wrapped up the preliminaries and began to ask their questions, Severus understood.
*
“I will ask you what happened as simply as possible. Did you abuse your great-great-nephew, Blaise Zabini?”
Damirini sat up in his chair. If he had taken a confusing potion administered to him by one of his enemies, Lucius thought, it was wearing off at last. Damirini gave Madam Amaront the little smile Lucius had always detested and opened his mouth.
“Of course I did.”
Lucius felt as though a flying horse had kicked him in the chest. He stared with his mouth open, although luckily everyone else was distracted with their own stares and cries and wouldn’t notice his loss of dignity. At least he’d recovered quickly.
Madam Amaront looked as though she was one of those who wouldn’t recover quickly. She actually tottered, and someone else, too distant for Lucius to identify from his seat, caught her and gently eased her back into her chair. She was shaking her head, and put a hand to her long white hair for a moment before she continued.
“Do you mean to say that you reply positively to the accusations?”
Damirini only looked faintly annoyed. He nodded. “Of course I do.”
Lucius squinted. He couldn’t see anything different about Damirini from moments before, but perhaps more revealing was Severus’s behavior. Severus was sitting up in his seat with his eyebrows raised, but he didn’t look the least surprised. Lucius grimaced a little. They’ll order a search for potions any minute, and then you’re out of luck, my friend.
“Why did you abuse your great-great-nephew?” Madam Amaront asked instead, her voice faint.
“Because he wouldn’t shut up,” said Damirini, with a little sigh. “I wanted to spend time reading and working on important political documents, and he danced around me yelling and pestering me to play. I taught him the proper respect a child should have for an adult. If it damaged him later, why is that my fault? He should have shut up when told to.”
The Wizengamot was mostly silent, staring at Damirini. He didn’t appear to have picked up on the appalled nature of those stares yet. “Can we hurry this trial forwards?” he added. “I want to give a meal for my friends in a few days, and my cook needs to receive special instructions.”
Madam Amaront seemed to recover, if only because of her indignation. “Do you understand you are on trial for your freedom here, Mr. Damirini?”
“Of course I do. But I’m not going to be convicted. I’m hardly the only wizard alive who’s disciplined a child a few times.”
“What exactly did you do?” That was Flint, and he sounded as if he was the stone statue of an ancient god asking the question.
“Broke his bones and then healed them. Had him fall from a height a few times so that a bone poked out through the skin of his leg.” Damirini shrugged. “You would not believe the fuss he made over that. Cast spells that taught him the sensations of having his skin peeled off and what it would be like to have his ears removed. There were a few times I sealed over his mouth and let him think I would seal his nose. Of course, I didn’t. I didn’t want to have to deal with his corpse.”
Lucius felt a gurgle of acid in his throat, and shook his head. What had Severus been thinking? Such a potion-which he thought now probably removed Damirini’s caution and made him speak his thoughts without any attempt to hold them back-was incredibly obvious. They would-
“I formally request the spell that detects the presence of potions in the blood!”
That was a minor Wizengamot member, Thaddeus Vendredes, who usually voted the way Damirini told him to. But from the instant agreement, Lucius knew he wouldn’t be the only one ready to believe whatever the spell showed.
Lucius let his gaze stray back to Severus’s face as the Wizengamot called in the Healer who could perform the spell. Incredibly, Severus only sat there, and didn’t seem inclined to move, despite the fact that he would be immediately under suspicion. He was Zabini’s Head of House, and one of the major reasons this trial had happened at all.
Severus looked at Lucius with a faint smile, nonetheless, and Lucius snorted as he watched the green-robed Healer walk in. Well, if his friend wanted to spend months in Azkaban, there was nothing Lucius could really do to prevent him.
*
Elena sat with her hands resting lightly on her kneecap, her eyes closed and her mind bounding through Jordan’s body.
There was another reason that the potion she had created was almost never brewed, beyond the length of the ritual and the sacrifices. It required harsh control afterwards, as the brewer forced it to blend with the victim’s blood and then used it to puppet the body.
But Elena had chosen her vengeance. What she had chosen, she accomplished.
She felt the Healer coming nearer, and the way the small flecks of potion buried deep in Jordan’s blood tingled in response. They wouldn’t show themselves on most scans, but they could rise to the surface in response to an unconscious thought from the brewer.
But Elena was not one of those so weak-willed. She breathed, and the potions sank back into the blood, became blood, turned indistinguishable from it. She heard the Healer cast the spell, dimly, from ears that were hers or Jordan’s. With her in control of his body as if it was a glove, she didn’t bother to separate them right now.
The Healer stepped back, and Elena did open her own eyes, because she could see her better than Jordan could, at the angle he was sitting. “There’s no potion,” the Healer was saying in what sounded like shock. “He’s clean.”
“There has to be something you didn’t pick up on.” It was the ancient woman who led the Wizengamot now, swaying forwards as if she would leap over the railing in front of her and drag the truth out of the Healer with her own hands. “Did you test for Veritaserum?”
“Any potion that affected him that powerfully would have appeared in the test-”
Except mine.
“-And this decisively shows that wasn’t the case.” The Healer motioned towards some glowing numbers that hung in the air. Elena looked at them politely. All of them said 0. “I know there isn’t any potion in his blood, Madam Amaront. I’m sorry to disappoint.”
Madam Amaront flushed, probably at the implication that she was on the side of a child abuser, and nodded regally. “Then you may leave.”
“Glad,” the Healer, a ginger-haired woman, muttered, and then almost ran from the room. Elena smiled at her as she went. She would have to find out who she was and send her an anonymous gift of thanks.
In the meantime, Jordan had been sitting there with a slightly bored expression on his face. That wasn’t hard to create. It was what he would have looked like during the trial if he was allowed to say what he’d planned to say. All Elena really had to do was tamp down some of his emotions and allow the words to the surface. “Can we go on now?” he asked, speaking directly to Amaront.
“It seems we must,” the woman agreed. But she had another man, the one who had looked like a statue earlier, speak for her instead of asking the questions. She sank back in the chair and fanned her face instead.
“Do you want Veritaserum?”
“I refuse. As is my legal right.” Jordan sounded disgusted.
Elena could smile without effort. She hadn’t had to make any effort to get him to say that.
“How long did your abuse of your great-great-nephew last?” intoned the stone-like man.
“Years,” said Jordan, with a negligent wave of his hand. “I hardly kept track of the dates. Why should I? They didn’t make an epoch in my life.”
Little hisses of disbelief caught fire all around the chamber, but Elena could feel the same reluctant belief coming right behind them. There was no reason for them to think Jordan was lying, not when the Healer had cleared him of potion influence. Perhaps some of them would think back, remember his arrogance from past Wizengamot sessions, and decide that this was only another manifestation of it.
Elena settled back to continue, and enjoy, her manipulations.
*
“And what happened when you began to think that your abuse of your great-great-nephew was wrong?”
Flint was doing a marvelous job, Lucius had to concede, somewhere behind the mist of his shock. He couldn’t believe that the Healer had found no trace of potions. Lucius had never known that test to fail, even with the much more subtle potions that were meant to confuse the perceptions of others instead of the drinker.
Yes, Flint was doing a marvelous job with a man who confessed the abuse without acting like he was confessing anything, only telling a boring story on a subject other people persisted in asking him questions about. Damirini was actually lounging back in his chair by now, opening his mouth in a contemptuous yawn. When Flint’s voice rose a little, Damirini shrugged.
“Who said it was wrong? I still challenge anyone here to tell me they never abused their children. Tell me.”
Damirini sat up and stared around the chamber. He didn’t seem to notice he was meeting only cold gazes. He nodded and chuckled and sat back. “As I thought,” he muttered, looking back at Flint. “They keep silent because they’re wondering what will happen next. Who else will get tried for only a bit of ordinary discipline?”
Flint’s questioning finally ended and one of Damirini’s erstwhile allies, Margaret Hiller, tried to save him. “You said once that you had information about the Zabini family you’d made sacrifices to keep out of the papers, Jordan. Is that related at all to your-treatment of Mr. Zabini?”
Damirini blinked at her. Then he shook his head. “Of course not,” he said. “I didn’t mean I had actual information I was keeping out of the papers, Margaret. You know me better than that. When have I ever refused to gossip?” He chuckled again, and how he kept from noticing the sick looks on the Wizengamot members’ faces was beyond Lucius. “I only said that to make myself look a little more mysterious. And to attract your attention, I have to admit.” He winked at her.
Hiller looked faintly nauseated. She tried to push on, but Lucius thought she knew the fight was lost. She wasn’t under the influence of an undetectable potion or titanic overconfidence. “Then you have no knowledge about the activities of Mrs. Elena Zabini? The many husbands she’s supposedly murdered?”
“None,” said Damirini, and laughed a little. “I told you, who could resist the gossip? Or adding to it, in this case, since my great-niece is the subject of enough gossip on her own.”
Lucius felt his eyes widen. He leaned back and shook his head, silently joining in the silent judgment, in case someone had been looking at him and noticed his revelation.
He had never heard that Elena Zabini was especially skilled in the brewing of potions, not like Severus. On the other hand, she wouldn’t need to be, not if she had enough rage for her son driving her. There were potions that depended more on strength of will than craft.
And yes, there she was, sitting in a distant corner of the gallery that Lucius hadn’t noticed before.
Lucius managed to catch her eye and incline his head in respect. She nodded back at him, distantly, and then focused on Damirini again.
She’s making him admit the truth when it comes to the abuse and conceal any knowledge he might have of her. But it was more than that, Lucius knew. More than words. It was attitude, and body language, and tone of voice. She’d probably even made Damirini sway and look a little drunk when he first came in on purpose, so that she could get him tested for potions all the sooner.
And with that spell cast, the people who questioned him had to admit that Damirini’s repulsive opinions were his own.
If Lucius knew them, many members of the Wizengamot were revolted by Damirini having the bad taste to say those things openly more than they were by his actions. But it was the result and not the source of their actions that was important. If they got him sent to Azkaban, few would question why he’d decided to confess.
Content, Lucius sat back to watch the rest of the drama play out.
*
In the end, they never even called Severus as a witness.
Damirini continued to condemn himself out of his own mouth-or rather, Elena Zabini’s-with boredom and incredulity lacing his tone the more they asked him questions. He answered everything with details that, as far as Severus could tell, were not made up, including confirming that he’d written letters to Zabini threatening him out of coming forwards when Harry made his own abuse known.
“Of course I did. Didn’t want anyone else poking into the family, did I? And we’ve always kept our secrets to ourselves.”
The Wizengamot members kept tossing the role of questioner back and forth among themselves as if it was a particularly disgusting potato. None of them could stand it for longer than a few minutes.
Severus had to swallow his amusement as he watched their faces twitch and their fingers stop just short of writhing. Would they have the same reaction to any announced case of child abuse? Or was it only the manner in which Damirini recited it that made them so upset?
The manner.
Severus breathed through his anger. He would see other abused Slytherins granted the same kind of trial, and even Harry, if he would permit it. He had only to wait.
In the end, Madam Amaront rose to her feet and called for a vote. And not one hand was down when the Wizengamot voted to condemn Jordan Damirini to Azkaban for the rest of his life. Amaront looked desperately glad to see it as she sat down again.
Then, and only then, did Elena release her control on Damirini, as Severus had thought it likely she would do.
His jaw sprang open as he stared from face to face, and then he tried to surge to his feet. The second Auror who had come unobtrusively into the courtroom some time ago immediately pressed him back into the chair, and the chains tightened with a clatter. Damirini was still shaking his head in denial.
“No-you can’t-you’re doing this on the word of a boy and nothing else-”
“We’re doing it on your own words, Damirini,” said Amaront tiredly. She waved her hand again, and the Aurors escorted Damirini away.
Elena Zabini watched them go with a hawk’s subtle satisfaction in her eyes. Then she nodded to Severus and someone else he couldn’t see in the crowd, and swept out of the room.
Severus rose slowly to his feet. That had gone so well that he remained motionless for some seconds, waiting for an explosion to rip through the room or a warning to go up that Damirini had managed to escape.
But nothing happened. That part of the ordeal for both Harry and Mr. Zabini, then, was truly over.
Chapter Eighty.
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